Windows Azure administration: Useful resources

This dashboard gives a general overview of the Azure services across the world. You will get a region wise status of various service offerings , say Compute, Storage, Active directory etc. If Microsoft has detected any issues with any of its datacenters you will find it here. The data is refreshed every 10 mins. Also there is an option to view the historic data as well. This would be one of the first places to check if you feel that Azure is not behaving as expected.

If you are an automation enthusiast and would like to automate your Azure management chores, Azure powershell cmdlets opens a world of opportunities. Of course you need to install them first. Please refer my blogpost here for getting started. The link above provides you the complete powershell cmdlet reference for Azure.

If we use PAAS from Azure, Microsoft will take care of the guest OS update procedure(is if you set the oS system version as automatic) . Guest OS update is similar to the monthly patch update on your on premises computers. What if you suspect that something is broken because of a recent OS update? The above RSS feed provides you a brief of what all went into the latest OS update of Azure.

This link provides comprehensive details of the Azure SDK versions and the guest OS families in Azure that they are compatible with. Additionally it provides information on the latest OS familly versions, when they will expire etc.

A working mom with head in the cloud!! Literally.. I have been working in IT industry for close to 12 years now. Starting with Datacenter management, Virtualization and now cloud computing. Currently, I am working as a Technical Consultant in Microsoft focusing on Cloud and Infra technologies. I enjoy sharing my experiences in my blog, but the opinions expressed in this blog are my own and does not represent those of people, institutions or organizations that I may be associated with in professional or personal capacity, unless explicitly stated.